House Dems strike deal on climate

They still call it the Waxman-Markey climate-energy bill — but it’s Nancy’s bill now.

By saying she would pass the massive — and massively controversial — cap-and-trade bill by the start of the July 4 recess, the House speaker took a big gamble, setting herself up for a daring political victory or the biggest defeat of her six months as President Barack Obama’s legislative ramrod.

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And on Monday, Pelosi doubled down, scheduling a Friday vote on the legislation, overriding the objections of farm staters and moderates who fear the vote could explode into a potentially lethal election issue next year as Republicans cast it as a one huge tax hike.

Tuesday evening, the bet seemed to be paying off. After weeks of negotiations, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) announced he had struck a deal with Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), who led a push for greater protections for farmers and rural interests.

“We have an agreement, and we’re moving forward on Friday,” Waxman told reporters on Tuesday evening after he and Peterson had met with moderate Democrats in the Blue Dog Coalition. “We’re going to pass this bill.”

Asked if he’d be able to support the bill on the floor, Peterson said, “Yes.”

It was a major turn of events. Just hours earlier, an anxious Democratic aide said that leadership “probably” had the votes to get the bill passed, “but who knows?” The aide was awaiting the result of a Tuesday night whip count — one where between 40 and 50 Democrats had been expected to be in the “undecided” or “too scared to say” column.

“This is a heavy lift right now,” another leadership staffer had warned earlier Tuesday. “We’ll see what happens on Friday.”

Pelosi’s main job — made easier by the Waxman-Peterson deal — will be persuading senior Blue Dog Democrats and rural members to vote for the legislation so that recently elected Democrats in conservative districts don’t have to.

So far this year, Pelosi has successfully ridden herd on her oft-obstreperous caucus, ramming through a $780 billion stimulus on a few days’ notice and a controversial war supplemental that divided Democrats into pro- and anti-war camps. And she has succeeded so far in heading off a revolt from pay-as-you-go moderates mortified by record-smashing deficits.

In recent months, she has stumbled a few times, most notably on the issue of her 2002 waterboarding briefing.

Yet even as her approval rating slumps south of 40 percent, she has maintained a firm grip on the Democrats — a record that could be reversed by a defeat this week on climate change.

To avert disaster, Pelosi has assembled a team of nine members to whip the legislation, including Democratic Congressional Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who pushed ferociously behind the scenes to expedite health care reform and delay this bill to protect the party’s most vulnerable freshmen.

The group also includes the bill’s authors, Waxman and Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), along with a regionally diverse group of Democratic Energy and Commerce Committee members like Reps. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) and Rick Boucher (D-Va.).